Allison Leone Is The Towel Rack’s Soccer Player of the Year
This is something I wanted to start sometime last week, but with traveling and Christmas and the like…long story short, it didn’t happen then. But it’s happening now!
I wanted to ringout 2017 by naming our own players of the year in the respective team sports on the Hill. Today, we begin with soccer, and the winner of the Towel Rack’s first ever Soccer Player of the Year is…
ALLISON LEONE!
Look how happy she is to earn this recognition. A true honor, it is.
Leone capped her senior season by starting all 17 games and logging a 0.92 goals against average, allowing just 16 goals on the season and making 72 saves.
In total over four years on the Hill, Leone finished with a GAA of 0.98 and went 37–28–7.
While this was a disappointing season for the Lady Tops, Leone wasn’t the reason for it. She was stellar between the posts and is going to be a huge void come the 2018 season.
Congrats to Allison on the stellar year.
Here’s what some of our writing staff said about Leone this year
“Leone will go down as one of the most underappreciated players on the team. While the WKU offense struggled for most of the year; Leone did not. She finished her senior season with a save percentage of .818 while giving up less than a goal per match.”
— Sam Gormley
“Leone has been an amazing presence at goal for a long time now. She has received multiple accolades, including All-Freshman in 2014, Second Team All-Conference, and Third Team in 2017. On a team that did not average a goal a game offensively, Leone was amazing, only missing nine minutes of action all season and never allowing more than two goals in any game in 2017.”
— Matt McCay
Honorable Mention: Chandler Backes
Backes has left one heckuva mark on the Lady Tops’ program in just two years on the Hill. She totaled six goals in 17 games this year, after scoring 10 in 19 a season ago. Her six goals led the Lady Toppers, as did her 15 total points, and her two game-winning goals was tied for the most this season.
“Backes had a very strong freshman year for WKU and that success continued into her sophomore year. She finished with 6 goals and 15 total points for WKU and played 1,116 total minutes in 2017.”
— Jared Rosdeutscher
